Monday, May 2, 2016

While de Blasio and the press focus on Putnam $$$ laundering the FBI looks at the Terminator: Citizens United

Why Citizen United Violations Will
Force Mayor de Blasio to Resign

The Press Follows the Mayor's Spin like a Dog Follows a Bone

As usual, the weak press is taking its clues from the mayor's spin
doctor lobbyists and ignoring the facts. The mayor has got his lawyers and
media puppets and even Common Cause all singing that the governor is also
laundering money though party committees to get around election law spending
limits.

FBI in the No Spin Zone

Nobody but the Feds are looking at how team de Blasio violated Citizens United.
Last year the feds not only warned campaign consultants not to coordinate
campaigns with Super PACs they put a major campaign consultant in jail. Tyler
Harber, who worked as an aide to former Knox County Tennessee Mayor Mike
Ragsdalen, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady after Harber,
34, pleaded
guilty to illegally coordinating campaign spending between a
political-action committee he had helped create and a Virginia congressional campaign he was
managing in 2012.

The FBI Task of Connecting Campaign Consultants to Coordinating With
Super PACs They Controlled Will Be Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

All the FBI has to do is to chart the interlocking directorates of
the following PACs: NYCLASS, Campaign for One New York and the UFT's United for
the Future. True News has already reported that to better understand why and
how the mayor's distraction spin operates a good place to start is Laurence
Laufer’s law firm: Kantor Davidoff Wolfe.

Laufer is the election lawyer who wrote the counter attack against
NYSBOE Chief Enforcement Office Risa Sugarman’s report, sent to the Manhattan
DA Cyrus Vance for a criminal investigation, which found “willful and flagrant”
violations of election law by a group of political operatives known as Team de
Blasio. The NYSBOE’s report says that the fundraising effort was run out of Mr.
de Blasio’s City Hall and involved Emma Wolfe, his top political aide on the
city's payroll, Ross Offinger, a fundraiser and treasurer for both the mayor’s election
campaign and Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit created by Mr. de Blasio to
support his agenda.

The report also names several union officials and political
consulting firms, including Berlin Rosen, which has longstanding ties to the
mayor. Both Berlin Rosen and Red Horse, which work for the mayor's Campaign for
One NY PAC that raised money laundered through a Putnam Democratic Party
Committee, also work for Democratic Senate Campaign Committee on the same
campaigns as consultants that the Campaigns for One NY PACs raised money for.

It is hard to understand why the Campaign Finance Board, Conflicts
of Interest Board and the Attorney General did not prosecute the Advance Group,
NYCLASS PAC and others for violating Citizens United by coordinating campaign
spending they controlled with a PAC they also controlled. On June 1, 2013
NYCLASS received another large donation, this time for $175,000. It came from
UNITE HERE!—a labor union headed by John Wilhelm, de Blasio’s cousin—and a
prolific fund-raiser for him. Wilhelm raised $6,950 for de Blasio’s 2009 race
for public advocate and $80,000 for de Blasio’s successful campaign for mayor.
Two days after that contribution, on June 3, NYCLASS sent the same amount,
$175,000, to the anti-Quinn campaign.

NY's Prosecutors Ignored the Only Way to Control Citizens United:
Stop the Coordinating Between the Campaign Consultant and the PACs Why?

On October 8th, 2015, the Campaign
Finance Board, Conflicts of Interest Board and AG Schneiderman fined
the Advance Group for coordinating campaigns with NYCLASS, which they
controlled with campaigns they ran. No mention in the report spoke to the
violation of Citizen United. No mention in the report answered the question why
the UFT paid Advance through a made up name "Strategic Consultants
Inc." The FBI has subpoenaed those UFT records and personal records
of the union’s president, Michael Mulgrew.

Why was there a cover-up of the
UFT's United for the Future and NYCLASS PACs' Citizens United violation? 1. The
mayor and speaker control all the appointments to the Campaign Finance Board
and Conflicts of Interest Board, which ignored the Advance Group violation of
Citizens United. 2. A lawyer from Laurence Laufer’s (the guy who attacked the
NYSBOE criminal referral on team de Blasio) law firm Kantor Davidoff Wolfe,
Lawrence Mandelker, is de Blasio’s lawyer for his campaign committee and the
Campaign for One NY PAC. Mandelker also was the lawyer for the Advance Group
during the CFB, AG and Conflicts of Interest Board investigations. Mandelker is
also the lawyer for the WFP in all the Data and Field investigations.

The Interlocking Directorates of Campaign PACs, City Hall PACs and
Team de Blasio

The campaign consultant PAC
coordination was not limited to NYCLASS and Campaign for One NY. The biggest
consultant PAC coordination helped elect 37 of the 51 members of the Council,
including the Speaker. The Advance Group was fined by the CFB for their
campaign consultant Super PACs, NYCLASS and the UFT coordination in
Councilmember Cumbo and Levine’s campaigns. The CFB ignored the fact that
Berlin Rosen worked as a lobbyist for the UFT, as well as on both the Cumbo and
Levine campaigns that Advance worked on. Berlin Rosen worked on 10 Council
campaigns while their employer, UFT, funded those 10 candidates with their PAC
United for the Future. Red Horse, a campaign consulting firm that worked for
the mayor's Campaign for One NY PAC (as did Berlin Rosen), also worked for the
UFT's PAC United for the Future and ran 7 Council campaigns that were also
funded by UFT PAC.

Who Is Watching the Lobbyists? The City’s Top Law Enforcement
Officials Must Recuse Themselves

It is now clear that the
DAs count on the same campaign consultant lobbyists for re-election. Red Horse
consultants worked in 4 or the 5 New York City DA campaigns. Berlin Rosen
started out working for Eric Schneiderman when he

Tyler Harber’s prosecution, and the two year federal prison
sentence he recently received, are clearly warning shots across the bow of
federal political campaigns around the country. And the blatant and
unsympathetic nature of Mr. Harber’s crime should give no comfort to those
watching and advising political candidates and campaigns. The United States
Department of Justice means to pursue the illegal coordination between official
campaigns and Super PACs, and Mr. Harber’s is the first of many investigations
into the world of big money politics coming to an election cycle near
you. Now, Mr. Harber is not a guy who engenders much sympathy.
During a three month period in 2012 he was Campaign Manager and general
consultant for a Congressional Candidate in Virginia. While leading that campaign
he directly coordinated and participated in the purchase of $325,000 in
advertising by a political action committee (PAC) that opposed his candidate’s
opponent, and thus benefitted his candidate. He was paid more than $9,000
as a “commission” for his work.

Judge sentences former Ragsdale aide Tyler Harber to 2 years in federal prison
(Knocville New Sentinel)

A nationally prominent political operative whose abrasive,
anything-to-win style frequently landed him in trouble in Knoxville a decade ago is going to prison for
two years for breaking federal campaign laws.

Tyler Harber, who worked as an aide to former Knox County
Mayor Mike Ragsdale but now lives in northern Virginia, was sentenced Friday by
U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria, Va. Harber said he also was
motivated in part because he had seen other political operatives commit the
same offenses without being caught and prosecuted. Harber, 34, pleaded guilty in February to illegally coordinating
campaign spending between a political-action committee he had helped create and
a Virginia
congressional campaign he was managing in 2012. He also pleaded guilty to lying
to FBI agents investigating his activities. “The defendant’s criminal conduct
was not borne of ignorance, naiveté or mistake,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark
D. Lytle wrote in a pre-sentencing memo filed with the court. “Rather, the
conduct engaged in here was undertaken by an intelligent and careful man with
significant experience in politics and campaign finance. He knew exactly what
he was doing and exactly the best way to conceal it from his party and from law
enforcement.” “He is, in short,” Lytle said, “the most dangerous sort of
political operative by virtue of his knowledge and experience.”Lytle had recommended that O’Grady sentence Harber to 46
months in prison.